


Finding Meaning (In the Suffering)

by angstbot



Series: Readers' Choice [18]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 03:53:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5191196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angstbot/pseuds/angstbot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Neverland arc retold through Regina’s residual trauma from electro-torture. Pre-SQ. Readers’ Choice VI, part 5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Meaning (In the Suffering)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Survivor](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1132522) by [angstbot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angstbot/pseuds/angstbot). 



> I probably over-rated, but with the trauma stuff I wanted to err on the side of caution. This is an expansion/reworking of Survivor. The original had Regina imply Greg Mendel had sexually assaulted her, but that isn’t in this version because I couldn’t do it justice.

_To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.  
_ Friedrich Nietzsche

On the trip to Neverland, Regina quickly learned that whenever she let her mind wander she would find herself back in that cold, fish-smelling room.

_This is how we deal with your kind, Greg Mendel says. And yes, it’s going to be unpleasant. But exactly_ how _unpleasant, well that- that depends on you. The horror creeps over her, the knowledge of what comes next._

A sudden jolt beneath her feet had Regina back in her own body, in the present, in Neverland. There were poorly-steering idiots to yell at, which became mermaids whom she needed to survive, incinerate, turn to wood, which became tremendously satisfying fisticuffs with Snow. She was going, going, running on adrenaline and rage, until the splash of Emma into the ocean stopped them all cold.

The queen’s heart clenched in her chest. No. No no. Not Emma. She needed Emma. She blinked. They needed Emma. They. The mission. Saving Henry. How could anyone be saved without a savior? That Emma had always saved her, had always saved their son, had always saved everyone _from_ her was the one thing she knew for sure. The one thing she had known for sure. The one thing she had clung to in the dark and cold and agony.

When Emma breathed again, so did she.

**

Traipsing through the jungle gave Regina far too much time to think. Her instinct was to push herself, to exhaustion, past exhaustion, not only because of the dire need to get her son back but in order to make _it_ stop. She wanted desperately to be doing something other than plodding along behind this noisome pirate with nothing to occupy her mind.

_You have no idea who you’re dealing with, she’s croaking, her body still shrieking with pain even though the electricity is gone, and Mendel is replying, Actually no, you have no idea who_ you _are dealing with._

_A couple of fools in over their heads who go around stealing magic, she scoffs._

_Stealing magic. Tamara repeats, then laughs. That’s what you think we’re here to do._

_We’re not here to steal magic, Greg corrects. We’re here to destroy it._

_Magic does not belong in this world. It’s unholy. We’re here to cleanse this land of it. Tamara has the blank look of a zealot now._

_You think_ you _can destroy magic? Regina laughs, needing to find the Queen again even as she’s on the brink of tears. She desperately needs to dredge up enough defiance in this moment to not let them see how very, very afraid she is._

When they reached the top of the ridge and found it was a dead end, Regina knew she sounded hysterical at the idea of camping, but couldn’t help it. “You want to sleep while my son is out there suffering?” While she herself was suffering. Trying to sleep would be as useless as it was torturous, even if it was only going to be enough rest to regain their strength for the task ahead. She hadn’t slept in more than tiny snatches since she awoke from being unconscious.

Since she had almost died.

Sleep was even worse than inattentive wakefulness. Inevitably she would wake with her body arching in the memory of electrical agony.

******

Regina was vaguely ashamed to realize she’d woken herself up crying. But Emma was there, kneeling beside her and pulling her into her arms without a second thought. Regina was startled, and a glance at the savior’s face showed her surprise mirrored there.

Before she could stop it, the comfort pushed the confession out from between Regina’s teeth. "I can’t stop reliving it."

Emma’s eyes widened in recognition. “I’m so-”

“Don’t,” Regina insisted, raw. Sympathy would unravel her completely. But she clung to the savior’s strong frame.

“You survived,” Emma said after many long moments. “That’s something. Those people were monsters.”

“ _I’m_ the monster. I killed his father.” There, that was the loathing she deserved, flickering across Emma’s face. “I deserve exactly what I got.”

“No one deserves that, Regina,” Emma said quietly but firmly. “No matter what you did.”

**

Regina was startled to be awakened by Emma coming back into the camp, announcing that Peter Pan had visited her and given her a map. Hadn’t she just been talking to the savior? Wrapped in her strong, warm arms? Had she dreamed it?

“Why didn’t anyone else hear the Lost Boys if they were crying so loudly?” She demanded irritably when Emma explained why she’d wandered into the forest in the first place.

“He cast a spell. You fell asleep,” she said, looking around as if it had happened to all of them but then catching Regina’s eye meaningfully. So she hadn’t imagined it. “I couldn’t wake anyone. He only wanted me. Something about not denying who I really am,” Emma murmured, distracted by the thought now, spreading the map out on a rock and sitting to contemplate it.

“We’ll go try to track him,” Snow said, and David nodded. Insufferably united as always. Regina watched them go, then began pacing. 

She needed them to keep moving. She needed to not have to wait around for Emma to deduce the rules of this idiotic _game_. They argued about it some more, but they were against her just unlocking the damn parchment with her magic so that they could get moving. She threw her hands up in frustration and walked away from them, knowing it was a mistake, feeling the rising tide of horror and revulsion and despair.

_This little quest of yours, to cleanse the world of magic, she’s snarling, It’s not gonna work._

_Well of course it will. We’ve done it before, and we’ll do it again. Do you think that Storybrooke is the first time that magic has crossed over?_

_Magic has been doing its damage for a long time._

_And people like us? We’re here to stop it._

_It’s searing through her again, the worst pain she’s ever felt._

**

“Ready to thank me?” Regina knew it was petty, but she couldn’t help gloating a bit in her sheer relief at finally making progress after she had taken charge and used a locator spell to make the parchment lead them to Pan.

“Actually, yeah,” Emma conceded.

That honesty pierced her, and in the next moment she was murmuring, “And I’m sorry for sniping at you, earlier. I needed to be doing something, not just standing around with _it_ echoing in my head.”

“I get it.”

“If you’d let me do it sooner, maybe we’d have found him by now,” Regina said, suddenly needing to change the subject. Maybe I would have been spared an umpteenth reliving, she did not say.

**

Of course she’d led them into a trap. Hurting people was what she did, after all. It weighed on her, had her feeling twitchy and impossibly sweatier than she had before, had her poking at Emma every chance she got trying to get the distaste she knew she deserved. Even when Emma said, so, so gently, far gentler than her tone might have warranted, “I think you know our best chance is together,” all she could hear was confirmation that she was wrong.

Knowing that they were going to try to rely on _Tinkerbell_ , of all people, sent her thoughts spiraling into darkness.   

_Now go ahead and kill me. I just wanted to see the look on your face when I-_

_Her world explodes into pain. You feel that? Huh? That’s the end of you. That’s scary, ain’t it?_

When Regina found herself sputtering “You think it’s the best plan because your boyfriend came up with it?” she realized that something between herself and the savior had changed.

**

Regina was surprised, later, to hear Emma call back to her, “Hey,” when she stopped following. The savior coaxed her to keep up, stay with them, have faith. And she was making excuses, trying to not have to tell this person who somehow, impossibly, still cared about her that Tinkerbell was yet another person she had mistreated. But Emma could see through her, was making her confess that she needed to stay out of the fairy’s sight.

But then they were having a moment, talking about Operation Henry, and Regina felt so safe with her, with “The savior,” she murmured, devoid of any sarcasm. “My savior. You know, when I overheard that you were there, in the cannery, I felt such relief.” She huffed a humorless laugh. “Even though I saw him turn up the dial, I knew I just needed to hold on a little while longer and you would save me. I was startled to wake up to your mother. I was so sure it would be you.”

“I was- Neal-” Emma sputtered.

Regina felt exposed, and she was changing the subject, insisting that Emma go on without her, rescue Henry without her.

“What the hell’d you do to her?”

“What I always do,” she murmured, full of self-loathing.

But even so, Emma reached out and gripped her shoulder before walking away.

**

When the moment came, later, that Tinkerbell had an arrow to her jugular, manic and desperate, Regina found that she just wanted it all to stop. As she had in the mines with the trigger. As she had on her balcony. She wanted out. She could barely look Emma in the eyes anymore, anyway. Maybe she _had_ been trying to provoke the fairy. And so she ripped out her heart and handed it over, manic and desperate now herself. The anger was all she had, now as then.

But then, somehow, she was seeing Henry’s face, as he’d been when they thought they were all going to die in the mines, hearing Emma checking in on her even after everything, and suddenly she realized she had something to live for.

Her rant suddenly became a plea to choose hope.

**

It didn’t last. Back in the camp, she found herself with a sudden and acute need to be away from everyone else. She sat on the far side of a tree, unable to bear their chatter, waiting for the sizzle of current and the unnatural snapping of joints to come upon her.

The last thing in all the realms she needed right then was for Tinkerbell to lay another person’s unhappy ending on her shoulders. And yet, it was fitting. Even people she didn’t touch she ruined, even people who pressed their help on her unsolicited.

As her own screams started echoing in her head, she sighed, resigned to her own worthlessness.

**

It was small consolation that Mendel died horribly. But it was not even enough to cushion the moment Emma looked at her and spoke of foster homes.

For one brief moment she and Emma understood each other about doing what it took to speak to their son, and then she was seeing Henry and he was alive and healthy and she was squeezing Emma’s wrist holding the mirror. But as the high wore off and Snow started going on about not going dark, the weight settled again. She claimed it. Yes, she’d gone dark. And protected Emma from it.

When Emma decided she’d rather rush off to find Neal than save their son, it hurt too much to stay.

**

It was nice to have a leg up on Rumpelstiltskin, to catch him almost kissing Pan’s shadow and be able to mock his poor judgment. It didn’t happen often that one knew more than a man who could see the future.

It was good, for a while, this rhythm with her old teacher, the familiarity of barbed commentary and scheming.

But when they settled in to wait for Ariel to return, things became entirely too quiet. Regina tried to hold on to the memory of that shining moment of superiority when Rumpel suggested that she might be jealous that he had someone and she did not. That was ridiculous. That spot was not the least bit tender, thank you very much.

**

The pieces fell into place.

They got the box. They found the others. They planned and executed the attack.

They failed.

The girl, Wendy, told them what Pan was attempting. A new plan, and setbacks, and she and Emma made amazing magic together again, and they were there with him, their son, so close they could almost reach him.

And Henry shoved his heart into Pan’s chest.

Regina found herself holding Henry’s limp hand, teary-eyed, looking up at Emma and ranting, “You have no idea what I feel. You have your parents, you have this- person. A pirate who pines for you. You have everything and yet you claim to know what I feel? All I have is Henry, and I’m not about to lose him because he is everything!”

But there was that gentle tone of voice again. “You’re right. I don’t know what you feel. So what do you want to do?”

**

It was a giddy, relieved moment. Regina’s focus on ends rather than means had been an asset for once, letting her escape Pan’s tree, and Henry had been saved.

Their hands were touching him, each other, him, making one being of the three of them—a family—and their eyes met over his head. Regina didn’t know who began it, or if it was another one of those moments of understanding they seemed to be having so often lately, but the next thing she knew her hand and Emma’s were sliding, grasping the other’s arm behind Henry’s back, intentional this time, an acknowledgement, a connection. This was how Emma had been touching her throughout Neverland, warm and solid and caring.

Regina thought that maybe there might be something here, the three of them.


End file.
